Last year at this time our animal pack included a cat named Myles and a dog named Spirit, who we affectionately called Boo. We took in Myles the cat, who is well mature in his years, from a surrounding hill dweller. He’s the cat who’s become more like a permanent house guest.
Spirit was also later in his years when our neighbors witnessed a car drop him off on the side of the road and drive away. Our neighbors picked him up. He was a small black dog perhaps part Chihuahua and part Terrier covered in fleas and hairless around his neck from some type of collar he had worn.
At the time, in 2018, we had just moved to Anglin Falls Road and were living in a camper trailer in our now neighbors’ gravel parking lot. The day we met Spirit we were coming home from helping another neighbor down the road. As we parked in our gravel lot we saw this little black dog run out from under our trailer, and as my husband Phil opened his car door, this mysterious little dog jumped in the car with us. We adored him immediately.
When our neighbors came down from the woods they ask us if we could hold onto him until they could find him a home. We both knew we wanted to keep him. Serendipitously, that morning Phil kept mentioning how he wanted a little dog and I kept resisting, but there was something about this dog that felt so special.
He went everywhere with us, but his most favorite place to go was Anglin Falls. He loved it so much that even when we moved into our home down the road, he would walk the mile to Anglin Falls every morning in the Spring and Fall. He’d always find his way home. He probably made this trek hundreds of times and some frequent visitors to the Falls got to know him too.
Sometimes we’d go looking for him. The hikers on the trail would often say, “He’s up that way”. Most people wouldn’t try to bring him home because they said, “He seemed to know where he was going”.
A couple of times Phil showed up in the parking lot of Anglin Falls with people holding him debating on whether or not to bring him home, but they never did. He’d always end up back home. Another neighbor called him the Wandering Spirit. He was so intelligent in his own way; he always seemed to know what he was doing.
He gave us the greatest gift: teaching us how to be parents together. But he must have been traumatized by little children before he came to us, for he would growl and bite at them if we weren’t paying close attention. Our daughter Aurora was born in August of 2021 and by this time last year she learned to walk in the mounds of leaves, and soon enough began trying her skills with us on our daily walks with the Boo.
With a toddler in tow learning how to walk, these walks became very slow for him and as we’d attempt to make it to the nearby Persimmon tree and back, he would often leave us behind and make his way to the Falls.
At home as she began to walk he began to feel more nervous and growl at her. One day last October he nipped at her in a real way that made me question if he needed a new home.
The next day he never came back from the Falls. Phil searched for him as I tended to our little girl and we figured someone had finally taken him home. We put up a sign at the falls and on social media and left it at that. Months later in February, after flooding rains, he washed up by a bridge and another neighbor found him and put him in a cardboard box for us to come pick up. We buried him in the backyard, and I could feel his presence home with us.
His cycle was complete and I felt whole in our time together. As though we all lived our best lives together, and we loved him tenderly.
This past year I have been insisting we bring in another dog to act as a protector and friend to Aurora. We had reviewed many dogs in the past six months but no one was quite right. About a month ago we met a very large white puppy in the same parking lot that we had first met the Boo. Our neighbor had also found her on the side of the road and had named her Bella. She needed a home, but we were about to travel to Minnesota. We decided (or I thought) that if she still needed a home when we returned we would consider her coming into our family.
And she was! So meet Bella, the part Pyrenees and Golden(?) who is sweet to Aurora and every child she has met so far. The family dog and the guardian over Plantasia and supposedly our ducks. She is a lot as a puppy right now as we work on harmonizing together.
Last week she had gotten ahold of our duck named Maude (which happens to mean battle-mighty). We were unaware of the seriousness of her injury when it happened. Days later Phil held her as I pulled maggots out of her wound and we’ve had to transition into tending her wound twice a day.
So far Maude is happiest being with her flock and her flock with her. There’s a duck we call Mama duck who has been most concerned with her well being and would not leave her side when she was in rougher shape. When we began to isolate Maude, the other ducks would go up to her by the fence and quack and long to be reunited. When they would reunite they would all gather around her as she seemed to share with them her harrowing tale. I’m in awe of how much the ducks adore to be together and how they look out for one another. They teach me how much ducks need each other, just as we need our people.
This challenge has brought me into a stronger connection with my own veterinary skills as I continue to further my initiation into, dare I say it, a homesteader. Is that who I am becoming, I asked myself this week. A reclamation of this way of living with the animals and plants? Although we are far from self-sufficiency, I imagine us as pioneers gaining skills to move further into this forgotten way of life from our familial lines. There are many pioneers around us as well, and thankfully some still hold some of their ancestral knowledge on how to live with the land.
As for my pioneering and experimental care for our bees, tragedy has struck, seemingly. Both of the hives - Emerald and Freya - were buzzing with a lot of activity before I left for Minnesota, but when I returned they were almost quiet. When I finally had the chance to look inside their hives, with my mentor Megan, it turned out the Queens had both stopped laying.
It was a mystery to us that both hives would be behaving this way. Both Queens last laid about three weeks ago as the last of the bees were emerging from their cells. In one hive, the bees completely ignored their Queen, and I wondered if she was a new Queen for I saw a few Queen cells. So perhaps she was an unmated Queen, and being so then it would take her a month to get the hive up and going again, not enough time before the cold would set in.
This hive also had weakened so much that wax moth larvae had begun to tunnel through their comb. The bees were all huddled up in the center of the hive away from the larvae eating away at their home.
I had to make a choice: allow the moths to continue to tunnel their way through and decimate the hive, and the bees would die, or take the comb out and force the bees out.
I chose to extract the comb. I had recently seen a bag of comb that I had left unattended be completely broken down by Wax moth larvae and didn’t want to see that happen to this hive. I began taking a few combs away and realized it was lunch/naptime and I needed to tend to my daughter. So I left the hive open to return later and finish.
When I returned I heard a buzzing up in the trees. They had swarmed and were gathering upon the tip of a dying tree. This was magical to witness and made my job much easier to pull out the comb. I pulled the comb and left it outside until the rest of the bees dispersed for the night. I then brought the comb inside to freeze off and kill any remaining Wax moth larvae.
I question what could have caused this infertility? I feel ashamed to admit that it could have been the fresh sprig of Sweet Annie I ignorantly laid in their hive. I did this for I read online that when bees brought in pollen of Sweet Annie, it had a diminishing effect on the Varroa mites. I thought by adding a sprig, perhaps they would carry it out and the aroma would deter the mites. I remember not feeling a strong yes from them to put it in there, but I did it anyway. My experimental mind just had to try it I suppose. They never did take it out, and I too had left it in there. This is a very strong plant being in the Artemisia family. This could have led to their downfall. It could have been due to a neighbor who had sprayed pesticides pretty close to one of the hives this summer. It could have been the unseen electromagnetic waves. I really can’t be sure.
The bees shared that this was a type of initiation, as though getting to know them in this intimate way brings us that much closer to understanding each other.
Where do I choose to go from here? This leaves my two hives open to home swarms next Spring. I long to be with them again, and cried on our walk with Bella as we passed by my first colony on our way to the Persimmon Tree.
Their impending deaths forced me to reckon with the state of the Earth right now. Do the bees know they are unlikely to make it through winter? Noticing the fragile existence that they maintain and the impending collapse of what can happen when something goes awry, I felt the very real possibility of life as we know it also heading for collapse as we humans continue to live in a non-regenerative way. For currently the majority of humans live within a system, myself included, that depends on measures that cause ecological destruction. Is there a way out of this system which continues to propel us towards ecological collapse?
Currently, there is a proposed electrical substation and transmission line that is aimed for one of Berea’s most scenic areas, where hikers can now view a beautiful landscape of hills and forests and find peace atop many wondrous outlooks. If this substation gets built, this peaceful healing view will be gone. Last week, hundreds of people showed up at an open house in Berea to question this decision. Not only will the view be affected but there will be negative consequences on many people’s homes, farmlands, and all of the wildlife too.
The other night I took Aurora to look at the stars, and as we looked up in the sky we happened to witness the Starlink satellites being sent into the sky in rows and slowly disappearing into space. Thousands of satellites have been sent up since 2019. There is a live Starlink Satellite and coverage map that shows where all of the satellites currently are located. On the map, hexagrams, that reminded me of bee comb, are used to indicate the areas where people can begin using this Starlink internet service.
I can’t help but link the symbolism of these satellites, the electrical lines and even how our roads remind me of the larvae eating out the comb within the hive of the bees.
I’ve often leaned toward the side of optimism in the warning signs with the spread of ecosystem collapse, on a large scale known as the climate crisis. But the bees have helped me feel what that truly means. How the hives, while unhealthy, still appeared to be functioning, but in reality they were heading towards collapse.
They have also taught me that when their home is shaken up, they swarm to the trees and to the forest. Megan Martin, my mentor, shared with me that these sister bees may also join other hives, and help them towards their winter survival.
It reminds me of the mass exodus that is happening in the cities right now—the swell of people feeling unsettled and longing for creating a renewed way of life that is shared more intimately with the land. We too were those people who swarmed towards the trees to reclaim a biodiverse and more cyclical existence.
Even if we’re too far into collapsing, as my bees are, we still may live out our days in such a way that soothes our souls, nourishes our bodies, feeds the Earth, and offers a life worth living.
Spirit left us to die in his most cherished place, in his own way and time. With his death we are now in a rebirthing state as our family friendly guardian, Bella, joins our pack of one cat, two kittens, seven ducks, and soon enough two empty hives awaiting for next Spring’s bees to come.
And as the bees went to the trees, I too will go to the trees for this Aries Full Moon message.
Message from the Trees
When you’ve lost faith, remember, there’s a larger path that is unforeseeable. All you must focus on is the next step that is yours to take. We all only play a small role in an ever larger Universe, but it’s each of the small roles that piece together the fabric of the Universe. You’re needed to move the story forward in a way only you are designed to do.
With great loss, tears come to clear the sight of what lies within. It is this sight that carries purpose and light into those dark spaces that long to be found.
If we took the advice from the trees, and most humans listened to the part they feel called to play, could we find the greater pathway to living in an emergent regenerative way on this Earth? Or have we come too far? What does it mean to live within a system that regenerates itself, where death feeds our rebirth, giving energy to the next cycle?
Letting go of my bees in such a way has shown me how much I deeply love them. They invigorate me. Our story has just begun.
WOW, Sacha, a web of meanings you have woven here. I love this human you are, observing, reflecting, dialoging beyond humankind, witnessing and fully emotionally present to what’s transpiring around . . . I hadn’t heard the epilogue of Spirit’s story. What a remarkable self-directed creature he was. Bella is beautiful, sweet through and through.
These bees have important and heart-breaking messages for us. Our own real fragility is daunting. Love those ducks checking on each other. Hope Maude pulls through, hope Bella learned how easily those ducks are injured, and will come to fully take them on as her responsibility to protect. Hello to all
What a beautiful view of this sometimes devastating/sometimes joyous cycle. Thank you for sharing your hearts and your insights with us.